This afternoon we ate at our local athletic club, and they were holding a squash tournament, so the restaurant was super crowded with middle school aged kids, all of whom had their heads buried in their cell phones, including the four kids sitting behind us, which resulted in one of their dads scolding them, “Could you put your fucking cell phones away?! No wonder you’ve been here for 40 minutes, and no one’s taken your order!” I was kind of appalled but not really, because I’m accustomed to the f-bomb, and it was sort of nostalgic, as it’s something I could envision my dad saying to me. Continue reading
awkward
When you run into the plumber you haven’t seen in two years and you have to explain your family, and the interaction is questionable
Yesterday was New Year’s Day, and we went to the church we’ve been visiting, but we were 45 minutes late (by accident, but really, it was kind of a blessing), and then Joel fell asleep, and we wanted him to keep napping, so we drove through a buffalo farm, and there was a baby buffalo breastfeeding, so it kind of reminded me of myself, and the buffalo farm involved narrow roads with huge drop offs a la Colorado, except the cliffs were markedly less high (like feet versus thousands of feet), so I feared Mark would drive off the road, so I texted Mark’s sister’s husband, a paramedic-in-training who regularly sees fatal crashes, and asked, “Would you ever trust Mark to drive you through Colorado?” And he was like, “Is there a parachute in the car?” And I was like, “Oh, shit.” Continue reading
“Is he your first?”
It’s 3:30pm on a Sunday. I finish feeding Joel, and Mark and I dress him and ourselves for the cold weather as quickly as possible, so we may run an errand, while Joel, hopefully, falls asleep in his car seat. Our goal is to kill two birds with one stone – we hope to avoid the dinnertime fussy period that can result from no afternoon nap whilst attending to some unfinished business that is picking out new throw pillows for our living room. “I don’t want Joel to choke on one of these errant feathers,” Mark recently suggested, and I agreed with his sentiments. Continue reading
Random thoughts; deepest happenings
So lately, as I look around at the people in the world, at times I find myself zeroing in on someone random (of any age), thinking, “I wonder why that person is alive and Matthew isn’t…” I don’t like that I always think these things, but I can’t help it. Continue reading
Thoughts/happenings!
Within the first week of Joel coming home from the hospital Mark spent, I kid you not, 2.75 hours calling around St. Louis nurseries in search of the perfect pine tree for our front yard, because, when we constructed our house, we spent thousands trying to preserve an oak tree that is now dead, so we are being forced to plant a replacement tree in effort to recover our tree deposit from our municipality. But my point with this is that Mark needs to learn to better manage his time. Continue reading
Three alarm f#ckory
So this story is embarrassing, and I should probably be writing something more reflective/serious, but I just can’t because I feel compelled to write this instead because it seems more fun and also distracting… So last Thursday night we had what I’d consider to be a three-alarm fuckory at our house, which confirmed to us that during this time of heightened anxiety, in moments of non-stress, Mark and I can be relied upon to go ahead and manufacture some stress ourselves. Continue reading
Thinking of your blender… and you… but mostly your blender.
Recently I’ve been reminded (in the most bizarre of ways) that we have one extraordinarily special blender. It’s practically a national treasure, it seems. It’s commercial grade – the one you’d find at St. Louis Bread Company or Smoothie King – it’s a Blendtec. And Mark purchased it several years ago from Amazon for ~$7,000. Continue reading
Chickydoodles? (On naming my blog)
The other day someone asked me how I came up with my blog name. And several months ago I wrote a post to explain where I got “chickydoodles” and never posted it, but I’m posting it today, because an inquiring mind wanted to know, and it’s always smart to write for a target audience of one. And also, these past two weeks I’ve been struggling with intense feelings of exhaustion and isolation, so I tried to write about the exhaustion piece of this, but I failed (for obvious reasons). Continue reading
Deep thoughts; erratic happenings

Pregnancy after loss entails tons of blood draws (more than with low-risk pregnancy), because they test for all sorts of clotting disorders and shit. So the other day, I had my blood taken by a phlebotomist who I thought introduced himself to me as Mike, but then I noticed his nametag said Mondrakus, which is one badass name, if you ask me. Continue reading
People who suck
“I’m sorry. I just can’t. It’ll destroy me,” I tell my boss, following advice received in response to texts sent minutes prior. Continue reading